


All the Ways We Might Have Gone...

by EtchCantrellorLightningHeterodyne



Category: The Order of the Stick
Genre: Also to write Girard's mother, Angst, But neither of them acknowledged it while they had the chance, Cause she's badass, Funerals, If I have to live knowing I created this so do all of you, Multi, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Soon died and I refuse to believe they didn't all attend his funeral, The rest of it is just tears, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, This is just an excuse to make myself cry, This starts happy but it's actually a dream, cue incoherent sobbing, kill me for writing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 20:15:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19325323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtchCantrellorLightningHeterodyne/pseuds/EtchCantrellorLightningHeterodyne
Summary: ...and this is the path we decided on.





	All the Ways We Might Have Gone...

Stupid fucking dungeon showing them all their hearts desires (Dorukan and Lirian had both seen their wedding, which, gag). It was going to be incredibly difficult convincing everyone he hated Soon and wasn’t madly in love with him.

Especially considering that said paladin was sleeping next to him, covered in hickeys and bite marks and shallow scratches (though Girard didn’t look any better. Seems they had similar tastes), wearing his favorite shirt (the room was cold, and Soon, unlike Girard, wasn’t a furnace), and curled up into his chest and side like the cutest damn thing Girard had ever seen (and he traveled with Serini).

Neither of them had even been drunk. One fucking beer celebrating the defeat of the evil monster and the dungeon of said evil monster showing them both that what they wanted most was each other, and clothes had wound up scattered all over the room, and now Girard was going to have to break his own heart by not reaching for what he’d never have.

Actually, you know what? Fuck it. He was on a quest that might get his soul destroyed. He’d already broken every other one of his cardinal rules- might as well break this one too.

Of course, Soon picked that moment to wake up.

“Hmmm… morning,” the paladin murmured, and  _ fuck _ he was  _ adorable _ when he was sleepy-

“You’re wearing my shirt.”

_ Smooth, dumbass. _

“Wha- oh? Sorry. I was cold.”

“It’s… it’s fine.”

Girard closed his eyes, inhaling and exhaling as slowly as he could. He was  _ not _ going to have an anxiety attack. He was  _ not _ . Especially not in front of Soon, of all people.

“...you’re not okay,” Soon said softly. “Talk to me.”

This hadn’t been the first time they’d both opened up to each other and spilled their guts in the moments when everyone else was out or asleep. This was, however, the first time they’d be talking about each other.

“I’m in love with you.”

_ Oh… my… fucking… gods.  _

_ I mean you might as well just  _ say _ it, but that was like… extra I’ve-got-a-high-charisma- _ _ and-it’s-not-doing-shit-for-me. _

“I thought we established that when we got locked in a room designed to show our hearts desires, and it conjured zero illusions?”

“...why do you think it gave Lir and Dory a wedding, then?”

“Because what they want most is a future with each other. Hell, the other day I heard them discussing kids.”

Girard pondered it, for a minute, before turning back to the man in his arms, ice blue eyes staring into storm gray ones.

“And why do you think it gave us each other?” He whispered.

“Because we’ve never given a damn about futures as long as we have our here and now,” Soon whispered back, and Girard caved and kissed him.

Soon kissed him back. 

Maybe they did have a shot. Maybe they were going to end in tears or fire or pulsing holes in reality.

But, as usual, Girard didn’t care how it ended, as long as it was something worth beginning.

Soon smiled against his lips, and eventually the two broke apart, smiling softly at each other like the lovebirds they were probably doomed to become.

Smiling like they believed in each other.

The paladin’s smile widened into a grin, and Soon kissed him again-

-and Girard woke up.

The illusionist blinked the sleep out of his eyes, rubbing his face and glancing out the window of his bedroom. He lived in one of the rooms at the top of the pyramid, and so far he’d done a fabulous job cramming it with a lot of things he probably didn’t need.

Quite a few of them being things that reminded him of Soon.

Something ached in his chest- something old and hurt and untreatable, because there was no cleric spell that could fix heartbreak.

Yes, he’d lost something he never had- and oddly enough, it hurt just as much.

The sun was just cresting the horizon, which meant that the family would probably be up and about in an hour, with the exception of those who ate breakfast freakishly early (him among them). The kids would want magic lessons, the adults would want stories, and the elders would want victims.

Girard sighed, and put on some of the best clothes he owned.

He couldn’t give any of them what they wanted- not today.

News of Soon’s death had reached him quickly, a Sending arriving two weeks ago from the palace servant he’d paid to keep an eye on the paladin, and the funeral was today. A Teleport scroll sat on his desk- he’d need to pop in right after he finished getting ready, or there would be enough people there to notice.

Of everyone in the party, he’d never expected Soon to die first. Him? Sure. Dorukan had always been reckless with his magic, and Serini’s survival instincts had taken a swan dive with his into whatever sat underneath the Lower Planes after the party split. Heck, all it would take for Lirian would be a wandering evil-aligned monster she couldn’t beat on her own.

But Soon was  _ careful _ . He wasn’t reckless, he wasn’t an idiot, against all odds he wasn’t suicidal. And yet, Girard had heard that he’d gotten killed by being all those things. 

He’d been the only one at stake. No hostages, no people nearby, no sources of income there for the dragon to destroy.

And he’d rushed it, alone, without backup, without healing potions… anyway.

And now Girard got to be haunted by him, every night, because Soon was all he dreamt about.

Girard pulled his cloak on- black velvet, and it billowed beautifully in the wind- pulling the hood up to cover his hair. He wasn’t wearing any of his usual flashy colors, but he still wasn’t risking it. 

Hell, he wasn’t even wearing more than two layers- the poet’s shirt and the high waisted, slightly too tight to be totally socially acceptable, pants (both black), his nicest pair of boots, a belt with his Bag of Holding, and the cloak made up his entire ensemble. Not even a vest added.

The illusionist looked in the mirror, noting the dark circles under his eyes and the slight hollowness that had taken hold of his face since Soon’s death.

He snapped his fingers, covering both flaws with a small illusion- he wasn’t looking less than amazing for the funeral of his worst enemy and the love of his life, and he didn’t have time for makeup.

A knock sounded, and he thought it might be Orrin, back with yet  _ another _ grandchild (seriously, it was starting to get frightening).

“ _ Kethend _ ? Are you coming down for breakfast?”

_ Not _ Orrin, then- the soft, if slightly creaking, voice was- and always had been- unmistakable. 

“Not today, mother.”

His bedroom door opened, and Iridi Draketooth stepped inside. The dragonborn woman had been a ranger herself- never took up magic fully, but she’d taught her kids a few things. When Kanta and Tiran moved out, and Sami decided to go to a magic boarding school with Alten, it became obvious that Girard wasn’t going to settle for a life that normal- and, Iridi, as she always had, prepared her kids as best she could for recovering from the shit decisions she couldn’t stop them from making, and taught them all how track things in case somebody else made shit decisions for them and they wanted revenge.

Yeah. His mother was awesome.

The second she saw the look on his face, his mother gave him a vastly saddened look.

She’d lost his father, back before she even knew she was pregnant for a fourth time, when Girard was one and Tiran was seven and Kanta was ten, the same way- except that his father had died protecting his wife and his kids.

“I know that look,  _ kethend _ . Come here.”

Girard practically threw himself into the offered hug, sobbing his eyes out on his mother’s shoulder like he was fifteen and his latest crush had broken his heart (Girard had always had terrible taste, even when he was young and not as stupid as he should have been), and Iridi rubbed circles into her son’s back, wrapping her wings around him in almost a second layer of hug.

“Who was it?” She whispered, stuck between assuming it was Serini and assuming it was Soon.

“Soon. He- he just rushed in! He had no backup and no potions and there wasn’t even anything at stake-”

“Shhhhh, shhhh. There’s nothing you can do,  _ kethend _ . There’s nothing you could have done.”

“You don’t know that,” he sniffed weakly. She did- he knew she did, and she knew he knew.

“I’ve met them all. You brought them by when you came looking for our Gate, back when it was just a rift. I don’t let people spend four months under my roof without getting to know them,  _ kethend _ , and you know that better than anyone. Believe me when I say- your paladin could be even more of a contrarian than you were, at times. Going back and telling him not to would have had no effect at best. And I might  _ not _ know that you couldn’t have done anything- but  _ you _ certainly do,  _ kethend _ , and you’re far worse at lying to yourself than you used to be.”

Girard huffed, still not letting go of his mother, and Iridi smiled, lifting one of her wings a bit so she could see her son.

“I can come with you if you like,  _ kethend _ .”

“...really?” He asked, voice so tiny it might as well have been Dorukan’s Charisma score.

“If you want. I think you don’t want to go alone,  _ kethend _ , and I think nobody should have to go to these things on their own if they don’t have to.”

Girard sniffed, and nodded, hugging his mother a little tighter before finally releasing her. She folded her wings behind her back once more, letting her arms drop back to her sides.

“I could probably get away with the dress I wear to all of Orrin’s weddings, hm?”

“...that dress is black but so sparkly you almost can’t tell, has one thigh-high slit for each leg, and the neckline is so low that  _ I _ think it’s too much.”

“It’s hardly a wedding without a slutty grandma,” his mother said, a wide grin on her face and mischief twinkling in her violet eyes.

“Great-grandma. And this isn’t a wedding.”

“Fine. I’ll wear something suitable that doesn’t detract from the fact that you’re starting to toe the line between somber and nightclub. Don’t even think about leaving without me,  _ kethend _ , I’m sure you’re not the only one in this pyramid with a Teleport scroll.”

“I won’t, mother.”

He was going to need the offered support far too much to leave her behind.

 

~

 

The two appeared in a flash of purple light, a block away from where the funeral was held. The cobblestone street was empty- this part of the city didn’t wake with the sun like so many others.

Girard pulled his hood further over his face, and Iridi- wearing boots, a low-backed bodice (without an undershirt- scales were a lot harder to chafe than skin was, and she’d made the bodice herself, which meant it wouldn’t chafe anyway), and a long, full skirt (all her clothes were black, as well, which made her a little easier to mistake for a statue when she stood still than it usually did, and made her violet eyes pop even more than they usually did)- stood, waiting for her son to tell her where they were going.

Girard started walking, and Iridi followed him- he knew Azure City better than she did, and if worse came to worse they each had a Teleport scroll and enough levels in Sorcerer to use it. 

They passed a coffee shop that was still closed for the night, and paused, staring across the street at the cemetery. 

Iridi nudged her son forward with the tip of one of her wings, and Girard shook himself, looking out for any watching eyes as he and his mother crossed the cobblestone street.

The two spotted the group making up Soon’s mourners almost instantly- they were the only other people Girard could see.

Silently, the two slipped into the small, small crowd- so much smaller than it should have been.

A man Girard didn’t recognize stood before the closed wooden coffin that held so much of Girard’s life. The raven haired man was reading something- last rites, or some other thing relating to Soon’s divine petting zoo.

He looked around. Southerners, mainly, in the crowd, but…

There.

Right on the fringes. A black-cloaked couple holding hands- one in robes, the other in a draping Grecian dress.

A lock of blonde hair escaped the woman’s hood, and the hand that tucked it back had the telltale scar from when she’d cast Charm Animal on a badger and had rolled a one.

Lirian and Dorukan.

“ _ Kethend _ , who are they?” His mother murmured.

“Lirian and Dorukan.”

Iridi draped a wing over Girard’s shoulders, pulling him a little closer.

From the way her son leaned into the wug (wing hug. Wug. Tiran had invented the word when he was four, and it had stuck), Girard didn’t mind.

She didn’t have a favorite child, but Girard had certainly spent the largest amount of time with her, and while the Draketooth clan believed in helping people get strong enough to last on their own, she knew that sometimes you needed to fall back on the person you trusted most to understand.

None of her kids would ever be too old to come cry on her shoulder.

Girard blinked back tears as the man- Ronjo, he’d introduced himself as- started talking about who Soon had been.

Gods, he was doing such a terrible job.

Soon may have been a paladin, he may have been a mentor and a founder and someone to look up to, but he’d been so very breakable, and so very, irrevocably human, in the end.

Lirian and Dorukan stepped closer to each other, and Girard might have started when somebody pressed up next to him, but the fact that they were as tall as his waist and had a head full of wild brown curls was a dead giveaway to the fact that it was Serini. His mother shifted her wing a bit so the wug accommodated the halfling as well, and Serini smiled a bit.

The rogue grabbed his hand. Girard squeezed.

“I know you loved him,” Serini whispered.

“Yeah,” Girard said, struggling with the desire to curl up into a ball and break down crying. “I just wish I’d told him at all.”

Serini tightened her grip. Ronjo finished speaking, and stepped away, asking people to come up and share their stories.

Lirian walked up.

“Soon Kim was… yes, he was amazing. He was the truest example I’ve seen of how incredible humans can be. He took the worst thing that had ever happened to him- that  _ could _ ever happen to him- and turned it into the drive that founded the party that saved the world from the Snarl so nobody else had to.”

The druid stepped down again, slipping into the crowd before anyone could ask questions, and Dorukan took her place.

“No matter how angry I wound up being at him… I never lost my respect for Soon, or his devotion to good. He had the kind of drive that I’d only seen before in the most dedicated wizards in the world, and he was driven to help people, and… he did. By all the gods, he did.”

Girard smiled sadly, because if Soon hadn’t pulled them all together in the first place, it was unlikely Lirian and Dorukan would have ever met.

Another paladin stepped up, saying something about his devotion to the gods.

Girard would never understand why  _ that _ wound up being what stuck in their minds. His loyalty to a petting zoo. Not how cunning or how kind he could be. Not the way he got you back when you least expected it, not the way he always replied to ‘life isn’t fair’ with ‘that doesn’t mean you can’t be’, not how, one lonely night when it was just Soon and Girard, they’d fallen to  chatting about alignments and classes.

Girard had asked him what he thought mattered most about being a paladin, and Soon’s reply was one he would never forget.

In fact…

Yeah.

He’d get up and make a speech about that.

Serini slipped her hand out of his and her head out of the wug, weaving through the crowd, until she finally reached the spot beside the gravestone.

Silence hung heavy, before Serini spoke.

“Soon had an indestructible faith in people that I will never understand. I admired him for it anyway. He believed in everyone, and everything- he believed in redemption, in the ability people had to change and do better and  _ be _ better. He believed in kindness. He believed in acceptance. And… and I asked him why, on a rainy day that feels like a hundred years ago.”

Girard knew which day she was talking about.

“He said that he’d grown up hearing people toss around the words ‘life isn’t fair’. He’d grown watching them use that as an excuse. And… and he decided that just because life wasn’t fair, it didn’t mean  _ people _ couldn’t be. I can’t count how many times I watched people throw those three words in his face and him reply the exact same way every time, with a calm, measured expression, and a pair of utterly unreadable storm gray eyes- ‘No, life isn’t fair, so you should be.’ And… I just… I wish I’d told him. How much I admired him for that.”

Serini’s speech was the longest, but she had always been the one with the most to say. Dorukan wasn’t good with feelings, and Lirian wasn’t good with people, but Serini was both those things and more.

Iridi squeezed his shoulders with her wing before folding it back behind her back, and Girard started walking at the same time as Serini did.

He came to a stop before the small gathering, quickly changing his illusion to cover his tattoo, as well as the evidence that he hadn’t been eating as well as he should, and that he hadn’t been sleeping well at all for the last two weeks.

“I knew Soon well.”

He had.

“And I knew him well enough to know that his devotion to the Twelve Gods was unshakable. I knew paladins in general, and I knew that most people assumed that their loyalty to their gods and their alignment was what mattered most about them.”

Most people did.

“But… I asked him anyway. One night, when it was late enough that we both should have been asleep. I asked him what he thought mattered most about being a paladin. And I’ll never forget his reply.”

Girard took a breath, catching Dorukan’s eye from where the wizard stood with Lirian, Serini between them, and his mother next to the druid.

He smiled, ever so slightly, and utterly sadly.

“He said, without hesitation, ‘Knowing that the Good part of your alignment matters more than the Lawful one. It always will, at least to me. Be Lawful if you can, but be Good no matter what, because that’s the most important part of it- clerics exist to spread the words of their gods, but paladins exist to spread the  _ good _ of their gods. We aren’t here to convert people or to follow every little clause and footnote to the letter. We’re here to leave the world better than we found it, and if that means putting being Good before being Lawful, then so be it. If the second part of that alignment doesn’t mean more to you than the first, you shouldn’t be a paladin.’”

Girard stood, for just a few seconds, basking in the spellbound, otherworldly silence.

Then he began walking, and Lirian and Dorukan and Serini and his mother joined him.

They didn’t leave- they just… retreated. Minimized the risk of someone recognizing them.

Serini hugged all of them in silence, tears streaming down her face, and pulled a flying carpet out of her Bag of Holding, laying it out and sitting cross legged on top of it.

“I love every single one of you so gods-damned much,” she sobbed, and Lirian and Dorukan and Girard stepped forward as one and hugged her.

The rogue sniffled, and tugged the tassels on the carpet, and was soaring over the Azure City rooftops within minutes.

Lirian and Dorukan hugged Girard and Iridi, and the two vanished in a flash of yellow, just like they had so many years ago.

Girard took a shaky breath, and Iridi wrapped both arms and both wings around her son as he broke down into tears again.

They stayed like that for a while, and probably would have stayed like that for a while longer, but the sound of clanking armor met Girard’s ears.

The two rangers turned to see the funeral attendees filing away, most taking the same route out, a few slipping down other streets.

Iridi turned back to her son as it started- very, very softly- to rain. 

She lifted her wings to cover them both, staying silent as Girard walked to Soon’s freshly made grave.

“I… I think I’m okay,” Girard whispered. “I think I’d like a moment alone.”

Iridi squeezed his shoulder.

“If you’re sure,  _ kethend _ . I’ll make you and your siblings pancakes- the ones your father left me the recipe for.”

Girard smiled, still misty-eyed, and his mother teleported away to go make the pancakes she only made on very sad days.

The illusionist walked forward, up to Soon’s grave. A handful of things had already been placed there.

Girard reached a hand into his Bag of Holding, and pulled out the hilt and a part of the blade of a broken katana.

The very first rift they sealed, and Soon had swung at the Snarl. Much of the blade had vanished into the Snarl, and at the time it was actually pretty badass, but Girard had grabbed the remains of Soon’s sword in the hopes of it containing some trace of god-killing abomination energy.

It hadn’t.

But he’d kept it anyway, and eventually, it just became the symbol of how all of this started.

Girard knelt in the grass, and stabbed it into the freshly turned earth. 

Let people make of that what they would. Soon had been the start of all this, and he’d been the end of it, too- the sword that had marked beginnings and irrevocable change had been his from the start, and it was still his in the end.

The illusionist smiled wryly- a broken sword that had come to symbolize the start of things, left on the grave of the man who’d been the end of things.

“I thought you’d appreciate the poeticism,” Girard whispered, and he pulled out the scroll, and he vanished.

If the illusionist had turned around, he wouldn’t have seen anything.

That didn’t change the fact that Soon Kim had stood next to him, wishing with all his heart that he could have one more chance at life, if only to tell Girard that he loved him back.

**Author's Note:**

> I literally fucking cried writing this and I'm not even sure why, since I've read more heart wrenching things. Hell, I've written more heart-wrenching things. But ok brain you do your thing as long as I can keep writing books.
> 
> 'Kethend' is Iridi's nickname for Girard- it means 'gem' in Draconic, and he was nicknamed as such because he was extremely powerful for his age when he was little, and was clearly going to become a fuckin badass sorcerer later in life. Yes, she had nicknames for all her kids, and just for funzies:
> 
> Kanta's is 'rasvim' (treasure). She got it by being a goddamn kleptomaniac who somehow never got caught and sent to jail. She used almost everything she stole to help her mother out with finances.  
> Tiran's is 'ahkrin' (courage). He got it by ruthlessly and sometimes violently defending his family members whenever they needed him to, from whatever they were afraid of/couldn't defeat.  
> Sami's is 'martivir' (peace). She's the only reason the other three haven't snapped and killed and then Rezzed each other yet so yeah that one's fairly obvious.


End file.
